The One Metric Every Brand Leader & CMO Should Track.
If you don't know it, you don't know how far you have drifted.
Most brands measure what’s easy: awareness, impressions, clicks, sentiment, funnel conversion, reach. NPS.
[For a selected few CMO’s and brand leaders, I provide a free audit to map your Brand Relevance Score™ and Relevance Gap™. More below.]
But very few measure the thing that actually determines whether or not, and the degree to which, their audience will choose them.
There is one metric that matters far more than any other.
Relevance.
Are you the most relevant choice to your ideal consumers (customers)?
How relevant is your brand?
Because people always choose the brand that is the most relevant to their needs, given the choices they have.
And that’s a problem, because every brand ultimately lives or dies by one thing:
Do you matter enough for someone to choose you over the alternatives?
If the answer is “not as much as last year,” your brand is quietly drifting into a dangerous position.
I call this the Relevance Gap™ — the measurable distance between:
what the world now expects
what culture now rewards
what your customer now values
what your competitors now signal
and what your brand currently delivers
When that gap widens, growth slows. Pricing power weakens. Loyalty disappears.
When it closes, everything accelerates.
Why I Created The Brand Relevance Score™
Over the past few months, I’ve been running relevance diagnostics on several brands. This week only, we scored three FMCG brands.
Different categories. Different audiences. Different strategies.
Yet they all had one thing in common:
They were drifting.
Not because they were doing something “wrong,” but because the world around them was shifting faster than their strategy.
Culture moved.
Customer criteria changed.
Competitors adapted.
They didn’t. At least yet.
And the score revealed it instantly.
What the Brand Relevance Score™ does is simple:
It quantifies how in-sync (or out-of-sync) your brand is with the world you operate in — across five essential lenses.
This gives you a single number and a clear picture of the Relevance Gap™ —the difference between where your brand is and where the world is heading.
If you’ve ever wondered why growth feels harder, why your campaigns hit less, or why your category suddenly feels more crowded…this is why.
What the Score Reveals
Here are a few examples of what recent scores uncovered (category anonymized):
Cultural Drift:Strong brand equity, but lagging behind cultural shifts toward authenticity & emotional meaning.
Category Movement:The category was innovating on new functional promises, but the brand remained in last year’s narrative.
Consumer Criteria Shift:Younger segments changed their decision drivers — from functionality to identity, from “works well” to “fits me.”
Competitive Repositioning:One competitor reframed the entire category story and won relevance points without touching price.
Each of these insights can be traced directly to relevance — or loss of it.
Your Invitation: Get Your Brand Relevance Score™
I’m opening up a limited number of Brand Relevance Score™ evaluations over the next week.
You’ll get:
✓ Your brand’s relevance score (0–100)
✓ A breakdown across the four relevance lenses
✓ Key shifts in your world, culture, market, and customer
✓ The size of your Relevance Gap™
✓ The 2–3 strategic implications most likely affecting your growth
No fluff. No generic trend decks.
Just a clear, evidence-based read on where you stand and what needs attention.
This is especially useful for:
CMOs entering 2025 with new growth targets
Founders who feel their brand is “slipping” but can’t diagnose why
Challenger brands competing in fast-moving categories
Teams preparing for rebranding or strategy updates
Anyone who wants to lead their category — not react to it
If you want your brand’s Relevance Scoreæ (and understand your Relevance Gap™)
Just reply to this email.
Tell me a but about your brand and situation.
It’s quick, painless, and gives you the kind of clarity that normally takes months to uncover.
For the right people, I’ll set up a 30-40min debrief whare I go through your score, and the gap you need to fix.
This is not exact science, it’s directional.
We do deeper analysis for clients where we input more variables.
This is to show you how this stuff works.
AI + Human Synthesis.
Let’s close your Relevance Gap™
— before your competitors do.
— Tobias